Abstract
Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) use tools to probe for out-of-reach food, both in the wild and in captivity. Beyond gathering appropriately-sized materials to create tools, chimpanzees also perform secondary modifications in order to create an optimized tool. In this study, we recorded the behavior of a group of zoo-housed chimpanzees when presented with opportunities to use tools to probe for liquid foods in an artificial termite mound within their enclosure. Previous research with this group of chimpanzees has shown that they are proficient at gathering materials from within their environment in order to create tools to probe for the liquid food within the artificial mound. Extending beyond this basic question, we first asked whether they only made and modified probe tools when it was appropriate to do so (i.e. when the mound was baited with food). Second, by collecting continuous data on their behavior, we also asked whether the chimpanzees first (intentionally) modified their tools prior to probing for food or whether such modifications occurred after tool use, possibly as a by-product of chewing and eating the food from the tools. Following our predictions, we found that tool modification predicted tool use; the chimpanzees began using their tools within a short delay of creating and modifying them, and the chimpanzees performed more tool modifying behaviors when food was available than when they could not gain food through the use of probe tools. We also discuss our results in terms of the chimpanzees’ acquisition of the skills, and their flexibility of tool use and learning. Am. J. Primatol. 77:162–170, 2015. © 2014 The Authors. American Journal of Primatology Published by Wiley Periodicals Inc.
Highlights
There are numerous accounts of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) using tools to probe for out‐of‐reach food, both in the wild and in captivity [e.g., Boesch & Boesch, 1990; Goodall, 1986; McGrew et al, 1979, see Sanz et al, 2013 and Shumaker et al, 2011 for reviews]
We have previously reported the behavior of this population of chimpanzees and their interaction with this artificial termite mound as ‘termite fishing’ [e.g. Lonsdorf et al, 2009], given that the mound was baited with liquid foods, we consider that the probing behaviors recorded during this study should be more accurately described as ‘fluid dip’ behaviors [c.f
We aimed to determine whether a group of chimpanzees modified probing tools in order to extract viscous foods from a novel ‘artificial termite mound’ in their enclosure and, if so, to identify under what circumstances they modified tools for fluid dipping behaviors
Summary
There are numerous accounts of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) using tools to probe for out‐of‐reach food, both in the wild and in captivity [e.g., Boesch & Boesch, 1990; Goodall, 1986; McGrew et al, 1979, see Sanz et al, 2013 and Shumaker et al, 2011 for reviews]. Such probing behavior by chimpanzees is not restricted to a single realm; chimpanzees have been observed to probe using a variety of techniques and for a number of foodstuffs, including when termite fishing [e.g., Lonsdorf et al, 2004], ant dipping [e.g., Sugiyama et al, 1988], and honey dipping [e.g., Boesch et al, 2009].
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